handful_ofdust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust) wrote2009-05-18 11:38 pm
handful_ofdust) wrote2009-05-18 11:38 pm
Books/Words
Stats for last night: 1,122 words (assisted by Steve, who’s helping me over my current hump, and had some good ideas about the why rather than the how of certain events). Today: Roughly 500, though that’s a bit hard to reckon, since much of it was re-working and inputting of research. Overall word-count: 56,504. I have high hopes of getting this damn chapter done soon-ish, but don’t want to make any promises.
In other news, I’m closing in quick on 100 books read thus far this year, since Carol O’Connell’s Dead Famous makes an even 90. I spoke briefly with my Mom about how much I liked these books, and the fact that I’d discovered them through her—she brought home a copy of O’Connell’s initial novel, Mallory’s Oracle, when I was seventeen or so. She, of course, has completely forgotten this. We then went into a momentary talk about how she doesn’t like most of the books I recommend to her, because they’re so full of dreadful, fucked-up people. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly why I like them.”
“But you can get THAT in real life.”
“Except that the fucked-up people you encounter/read about in real life are rarely anything as amusing as the fucked-up people in good fiction,” I pointed out.
(I could very easily have gone on, perhaps arguing that I see no appreciable difference between the gothic psychodramas of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and the narratives of someone like (former Entertainment Weekly TV critic!) Gillian Flynn, who wrote Sharp Objects, one of my favorite books of the last five years, beyond—say—geography. As ever, though, there was absolutely no point in doing so.)
So: In lieu of more tales-o’-Gemma-and-Elva, let’s go with something memeish:
Name [twenty] books you've read that will always stick with you—the first [twenty] you can recall in no more than [twenty] minutes:
The Moon Pool, A. Merritt
Sword Woman, Robert E. Howard
An Enemy at Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston
Night’s Master and Death’s Master, Red as Blood, Tanith Lee
Andrew Laing’s Golden Book of Fairy Tales
The D’Aulaires’ Norse Gods and Giants
The Best of C.L Moore
The Light at the End, John Skipp and Craig Spector
Skin, Kathe Koja
Wilding, Melanie Tem
The Elementals and Gilded Needles, Michael MacDowell
‘Salem’s Lot and Night Shift, Stephen King
Ghost Story, Peter Straub
Empire, Samuel R. Delaney and Howard V. Chaykin
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. LeGuin
The Sardonyx Net, Elizabeth A. Lynn
Some of these taught me that horror was allowed to lie cheek-by-jowl with pleasure, or to be alternately scrupulous and unsparing with my characters; some taught me that I could let my deepest fantasies slip into my writing without being ashamed of them, and that they might even make the narratives not just stranger, but richer. Some taught me that the best way to tell a huge story is through the alternating lens of perspective, and some proved that main characters don’t have to be “likable” to be lovable (to me, at least). All involve magic to some degree, as well as blood. All were worth the effort.
Anyhow. Cal is still sick; Mom thinks she may have what he has. I may not take him to school tomorrow, depending. Steve has his job (yay!). We have no money (boo!). I finally alphabetized all my CDs, which took me most of the 24 season ender. And all that.
Later, all.
Amended to add: Arrrgh! I can't believe I forgot C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew!
In other news, I’m closing in quick on 100 books read thus far this year, since Carol O’Connell’s Dead Famous makes an even 90. I spoke briefly with my Mom about how much I liked these books, and the fact that I’d discovered them through her—she brought home a copy of O’Connell’s initial novel, Mallory’s Oracle, when I was seventeen or so. She, of course, has completely forgotten this. We then went into a momentary talk about how she doesn’t like most of the books I recommend to her, because they’re so full of dreadful, fucked-up people. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly why I like them.”
“But you can get THAT in real life.”
“Except that the fucked-up people you encounter/read about in real life are rarely anything as amusing as the fucked-up people in good fiction,” I pointed out.
(I could very easily have gone on, perhaps arguing that I see no appreciable difference between the gothic psychodramas of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and the narratives of someone like (former Entertainment Weekly TV critic!) Gillian Flynn, who wrote Sharp Objects, one of my favorite books of the last five years, beyond—say—geography. As ever, though, there was absolutely no point in doing so.)
So: In lieu of more tales-o’-Gemma-and-Elva, let’s go with something memeish:
Name [twenty] books you've read that will always stick with you—the first [twenty] you can recall in no more than [twenty] minutes:
The Moon Pool, A. Merritt
Sword Woman, Robert E. Howard
An Enemy at Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston
Night’s Master and Death’s Master, Red as Blood, Tanith Lee
Andrew Laing’s Golden Book of Fairy Tales
The D’Aulaires’ Norse Gods and Giants
The Best of C.L Moore
The Light at the End, John Skipp and Craig Spector
Skin, Kathe Koja
Wilding, Melanie Tem
The Elementals and Gilded Needles, Michael MacDowell
‘Salem’s Lot and Night Shift, Stephen King
Ghost Story, Peter Straub
Empire, Samuel R. Delaney and Howard V. Chaykin
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. LeGuin
The Sardonyx Net, Elizabeth A. Lynn
Some of these taught me that horror was allowed to lie cheek-by-jowl with pleasure, or to be alternately scrupulous and unsparing with my characters; some taught me that I could let my deepest fantasies slip into my writing without being ashamed of them, and that they might even make the narratives not just stranger, but richer. Some taught me that the best way to tell a huge story is through the alternating lens of perspective, and some proved that main characters don’t have to be “likable” to be lovable (to me, at least). All involve magic to some degree, as well as blood. All were worth the effort.
Anyhow. Cal is still sick; Mom thinks she may have what he has. I may not take him to school tomorrow, depending. Steve has his job (yay!). We have no money (boo!). I finally alphabetized all my CDs, which took me most of the 24 season ender. And all that.
Later, all.
Amended to add: Arrrgh! I can't believe I forgot C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew!
no subject
*snerk*
Sadly so true . . .
and some proved that main characters don’t have to be “likable” to be lovable (to me, at least).
Hell, yes.
I approve of several of your books and have the sense that I should perhaps check out some of the ones I haven't read.
no subject
no subject
I approve of An Enemy at Green Knowe, Night's Master and Death's Master, Norse Gods and Giants, Skin, Ghost Story, and The Tombs of Atuan. From the names, I'm curious about The Moon Pool, Wilding, and The Sardonyx Net, and I like the title of Gilded Needles. Recommendations?
no subject
Wilding, OTOH, is a female werewolf novel with zero sentimentality and maximum gore/freakishness; it equated The Change with puberty and the onset of menarche long before Ginger Snaps, for example, and one of the crazier subplots has the youngest member of the "founding" family suffering from bullimia. Grantedly, I don't love everything Tem's written, though I respect it all--if you like Skin, however, I can't help but think you'd (ha, ha) devour this one. An Abyss book, so hard to find.
As for AM Merritt...he's one of those weird 1930s fantasy writers whose over-lush style lingers in the mind, once encountered. Wrote Burn Witch Burn, too, but I prefer this one, which has a tunnel to the centre of the earth located underneath a "haunted" Pacific island, giant frog-creatures, a girl who can kill you by pointing a flower at you, and a hellish invisible monster which looks like a shower of silver, and is heralded by the distant sound of tinkling bells.
Finally, The Sardonyx Net--good, workable Space Opera, in which the main character stupidly runs drugs on a planet that sells pushers into slavery, and ends up falling for the woman he "works" for. Like most Lynn, it's full of canon bisexuality (always a plus) and the putative villain soon becomes the alternate protagonist, a man revealed to be struggling hard against the destructive nature of his own fetishes, and doing it with a surprisingly strict morality. Definitely one of my prime "lovable, not likable" formative characters.;)